TRACING THE SHAPES

Two nights ago I saw Jonathan Richman play a show at the Make-Out Room, a small bar/cub in San Francisco. Mr. Richman lives in the Bay Area, and he was playing four nights in a row. The show cost $15. It was really fun.

But the whole situation got me thinking about the question(s) of scale and sustainability and economics and community in the arts, about the light bleeding into the heavy, about the malleable becoming the monolithic, about the nomadic settling down, digging in, and becoming the gated community.

These are debates (one big debacle perhaps) that have been going on for a long time. No need to go over all that fall again, here. But still:

The publishing industry is in crisis. Physical books vs. electronic books? Will it be Saturn or Oedipus? Regardless, this is the most exciting time to be a maker of books, to be a publisher or writer of books, to be involved in the radical changes of one of the most important parts of civilization and culture. And we face many difficult and complex questions as we refine what we do, as we blow up what we do, as we draw breath through what we do.

In this gorgeous morning a series of lines are drawn. Not only to consider how each book looks, reads, or moves, but to consider the shape that it makes out in the world—socially, economically. Each object moves. The shape of our endeavors is determined by, kept open by, the endeavors that we connect to.